American Dirt

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The apartment is weirdly nice, if impersonal and sparsely furnished. It’s the lower level of a house that’s built into a hill, so it’s half a flight down from the street. It has four large rooms: a living room (with two black leather couches, a flat-screen television, and some grim artwork), a kitchen (whose refrigerator contains only a jar of mayonnaise and two eggs), and the two bedrooms (which are entirely empty, save a lone wire hanger on the tile floor in one, and an aerosol can of Raid on the high windowsill in the other). At the sleek kitchen counter, Lydia hands over their money. The price El Chacal demanded was $11,000. She gives it to him half in pesos and half in dollars because the bank didn’t have enough cash to give her all one currency. The two stacks of bills she hands him include all the money from her mother’s account, the 500-peso note Paola gave her, and every penny she had left in her wallet. The exchange rate has been dismal, so the total sum of her money is roughly $10,628. A few weeks ago, when the peso was stronger, it would’ve been enough. Today, she’s $372 short. The coyote counts the money, works out the exchange on his cell phone, and when he realizes she’s short, pushes the cash back at her, shaking his head.

‘No es suficiente.’

‘But we’re only a little short. Maybe I can pay you when we get to the other side. When I get a job, I can make up the difference.’

‘That’s not how it works.’

It’s inconceivable that it might come down to this. $372.

‘We had more, but we got robbed on the way.’ She hears the desperation in her voice.

‘Everyone gets robbed on the way,’ he says, unmoved.

‘No,’ Soledad says. ‘She paid to ransom us.’

‘She saved our lives with that money.’ Rebeca turns to her sister. ‘We can ask César. We have to.’

Soledad looks worried about asking their cousin for even more money, but she nods. There’s a note of hysteria in the room, hopping from face to face. Only the coyote is immune to it.

‘We won’t be leaving for at least a day or two,’ he says. ‘You can stay here with your son. You come up with the cash before then, you can come.’

Two days, Lydia thinks. They’d lived frugally in Acapulco, never touching their savings, taking a packed lunch to work most days, buying new clothes only when the old ones could no longer be repaired. The rare dinner out, an occasional movie. This is how they splurged. For their anniversary last year, Sebastián bought her a vial of lavender oil, so she could put a drop on her pillow each night before bed. What a luxury that had been! But when she thinks now of their small, sunny two-bedroom apartment, filled with shoes and books gathering dust, its kitchen pantry stocked with uneaten maize, dry beans, and cereal, the linens folded in the hall closet, two bubble-shaped wineglasses drying in the rack beside the sink, it all feels like extravagance. She has nothing now. What can she sell? How can she possibly get $400 in two days? Her mind searches for people she can ask for money. Dead. All dead. If she had her uncle’s number in Denver she might call. She thinks wildly, shamefully, of her body. How much could she get for sex? It’s sickening and obscene, and she’s grateful when she manages to discard the thought without real analysis. She will find a way.

Beto and Luca are sitting on one of the black leather couches behind them, playing some game about cars, but they can feel the strange tremor of agitation in the room, and they are drawn to it. They appear magnetically, one on each side of Lydia.

‘What’s wrong, Mami?’ Luca asks.

‘Nothing, amorcito, no te preocupes.’

But Beto, who’s accustomed to having to work things out without people explaining them to him, looks at the stacks of money on the counter, and then at Lydia’s face, and then at El Chacal, and says, ‘How much is she short?’

El Chacal lifts his phone from the counter and reads from the screen – ‘Three hundred and seventy-two dollars’ – and then sets the phone back down.

‘How much is that in pesos?’ Beto asks.

The coyote does the math. ‘About seven thousand five hundred.’

Beto goes into his pocket and flicks out his wad of cash while Lydia watches. He already paid for his crossing and still has money to burn. We just met this kid this morning, she thinks. He doesn’t even understand how much money this is. She rejects her misgivings instantly. He covers it.

She draws him in and hugs him. ‘Thank you.’

El Chacal tells them they’ll cross when the other pollitos arrive, and they should make themselves comfortable while they wait. He leaves them with almost no instruction, and after he’s gone, Lydia wonders if he’ll ever come back. They’ve given him everything, their very last chance of escaping to el norte. He doesn’t seem like a thief, but what if he is? Or what if he gets hit by a bus? She balls her hands into fists and tells herself to shut up. Don’t think.

They all take their shoes off as soon as the coyote is gone, and it’s incredible what a pleasure it is to be barefoot. To wiggle your toes freely without constraint. Con un olor a queso. Luca and Beto run up and down the hallway between the kitchen and the bedrooms, feeling the cool tiles beneath their sticky feet, and making tiny footprints of phantom condensation along the floor. Soledad tucks in her T-shirt and shows them a trick she can do: a handstand against the wall, her arms strong beneath her. The boys applaud. When they try to watch TV, they discover that the flat screen doesn’t work. Lydia finds a dog-eared paperback in one of the kitchen drawers and reads while the boys and sisters nap. It’s an older novel, a Stephen King book Lydia read many years ago, and slipping back into it is briefly transporting, like she can reach back through time and commune with the person she was when she first read it. That act of communion feels both lucky and holy. When the others awaken, she abandons the book with some reluctance, leaves it facedown on the couch, cracked open at the spine to page 73. They all look forward to taking showers, and are disappointed to find there’s no hot water. There’s also no food or pots, and only one frying pan in the kitchen, but Lydia heats up what little water she can in that, so they can sponge the dust and the sweat from their skin. They eat nothing, contenting themselves with the relatively recent memory of the birria, and fall asleep as the sun sets.

Early the next morning, just as they’re discussing how and what to eat, the door opens, and Lydia buckles with relief when El Chacal descends the four steps, followed by two men and an older woman. He’s still here. He hasn’t abandoned them. This relief is soon followed by fear: Who are these people? Lydia watches them for clues, for recognition. The men seem to know each other. They are young and wear their baseball caps low over their eyes, talking quietly together while ignoring the others. Long sleeves and jeans hide any possible tattoos. Lydia experiences a trigger-wash of nausea, but it’s chased off by her hunger.

‘Don’t go far,’ the coyote says. ‘If you’re not here when it’s time to go, we won’t wait.’

It’s tense in the apartment after El Chacal leaves. The sisters and Luca retreat to the bedroom where they slept last night, and the new woman locks herself in the bathroom. Lydia wants to find out all she can about the newcomers, but she also wants to keep her distance, to remain imperceptible and vague. And anyway, she’s hungry. Luca is hungry.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asks the new men, who are seated on the couch.

They are.

‘I will cook, if you have money for food.’

She will make omelets. A warm morsel of familiarity for Luca. The men give her some pesos, and she and Luca set out to find a grocery store.

‘Wear your new boots,’ she tells him. ‘Let’s break them in.’

They’re only a half a block from the apartment when they hear someone calling out behind them.

‘¡Hola! Perdón, señora, ¡disculpe!’

Lydia turns with trepidation and finds the new woman from the apartment hurrying toward them. ‘I thought I might come with you if you don’t mind,’ the woman says. ‘I need to get a few things myself.’ She carries a purple handbag and is dressed as if going out for a nice meal: black trousers, an oversize blouse, and wedge sandals. She’s slim and dark-skinned with short-cropped hair, black with sparks of silver. A gold bracelet on one wrist is too understated to be fake. She looks nothing like a migrant, Lydia thinks, and then remembers that neither does she. Or at least she didn’t when first they embarked on this journey.

‘I’m Marisol.’ The bracelet dangles when the woman extends her hand for Lydia to shake.

‘Lydia.’

‘Mucho gusto.’

‘And this is my son, Luca.’

‘Hello, Luca!’

At the corner, an elderly gentleman sits in his doorway, and Lydia asks him to point the way to the nearest shop. He does.

‘I need to buy fruit,’ Marisol says as they walk. ‘I’m used to eating salad every day, and my stomach has been all messed up since I got back.’

‘Back?’ Lydia asks.

‘From California.’

‘Oh! You were in California already?’

‘Yes, sixteen years,’ she says. ‘I’m practically a gabacha now.’

They both laugh.

‘But then why did you come back?’ Lydia asks.

‘Not by choice.’

Lydia winces.

‘My daughters are still there, in San Diego.’ She reaches into a side pocket of her purse and draws out an iPhone with a shiny case. She unlocks it with her thumb and scrolls to a photograph of two beautiful young girls, perhaps close in age to Soledad and Rebeca. She shows them to Lydia proudly. The younger one is wearing a quinceañera dress.

‘That’s my Daisy,’ she says. ‘She wanted to wear a Chiapas dress for her birthday, even though she was born in San Diego. She doesn’t even speak Spanish!’ She closes the phone and returns it to her purse. ‘And my older one, América, she’s in college now, trying to take care of her younger sister, trying to take care of the house.’ Marisol’s voice sounds thick and tired.

‘How long have you been gone?’

‘Almost three weeks,’ Marisol says. ‘But I was in a detention center for more than two months before that.’ She shakes her head and presses her lips together in a gesture Lydia recognizes. It’s the one when you’re resolute about keeping your shit together despite the fact that your voice is quivering, and your chest feels cleaved with sorrow. Luca doesn’t seem to be listening, but Lydia knows better. He’s always listening now, walking a few steps ahead of them and watching the cars come and go.

‘What happened?’ Lydia asks.

Marisol takes a big breath before answering. ‘We went legally, when América was only four years old. My husband was an engineer – he had work there, so we got visas. And then Daisy was born, and years and years went by, you don’t even notice the time going by.’

Lydia finds herself instinctively drawing close to Marisol as they walk, up and down the sunny hillside streets, around corners, and through quiet intersections. Luca strides heavily in his new boots.

‘Then five years ago, Rogelio was killed, my husband was killed.’ Marisol blesses herself and Lydia gasps involuntarily.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Lydia says.

Marisol nods. ‘It was very sudden. A car accident as he was returning home from work.’

Something treacherous and unkind lurches up in Lydia – a jealousy almost, of that kind of widowing. A normal, ungruesome death. But then she follows it: Rogelio is no less dead than Sebastián. By the time she squeezes Marisol’s arm, her compassion is genuine again.

‘Our visas lapsed when he died. We were supposed to return home to Oaxaca. Only Daisy was permitted to stay because she’s a citizen.’

‘But that’s absurd,’ Lydia says. ‘She’s how old?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Ay.’ She’s heard the stories, of course. But it’s different talking to a mother who’s actually living it. Lydia can’t imagine being separated from Luca, on top of all the other griefs. He’s there, walking just ahead of them, but Lydia has to fight the urge to lunge for him, to crush him to her chest.

Lydia’s always been a devoted mother, but she’s never been the codependent kind who misses her child when he goes to school or to sleep. She’s always treasured that time to herself, to inhabit her own thoughts, to have a break from the nonstop emotional clamoring of motherhood. There were even times in Acapulco when she’d experienced a sliver of resentment at the way he barged into her heart and mind whenever he was around, how Luca’s energy usurped everything else in the room. She loved that boy with her whole heart, but my God, there were days when she couldn’t fully breathe until she’d left him at the schoolyard gate. That’s all over now; she would staple him to her, sew him into her skin, affix her body permanently to his now, if she could. She’d grow her hair into his scalp, would become his conjoined twin-mother. She would forgo a private thought in her head for the rest of her life, if she could keep him safe. Luca waits at the corner, and Lydia looks beyond him, across the street, where the side of a building is painted with graffiti. A giant question mark. No. No, it’s not a question mark. Lydia stops cold. She puts her hand out for Luca.

‘Mijo.’

‘Are you okay?’ Marisol asks.

It’s not a question mark. It’s a sickle. And beneath the sickle, in fresh black paint, the slanted letters warn: Vienen Los Jardineros. Perched on the curved blade is an owl. La Lechuza. And then something new, something Lydia has not seen before: a perfect, faceless rendering of Javier’s distinctive glasses. The exact shape as to provoke in her memory the man himself. Where the lenses would be, someone has scrawled, Aún te está buscando. He is still looking for you.

For me. He is looking for me, Madre de Dios. Lydia turns on her heel. ‘Luca, come.’

‘But, Mami—’

‘Come!’ she snaps, her voice like a whip.

Marisol jogs to catch up with her. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks again.

After seventeen days, sixteen hundred miles. Here, on the doorstep to el norte, los pinche Jardineros. How flawlessly the artist has rendered Javier’s glasses! As if he’s familiar with them. As if he’s seen them in person, here, in Nogales. Lydia will fall down on the street. Her knees will give way. The wind passes through her body as if she’s mostly holes, a ghost already. Marisol reaches out to steady her.

‘We cannot go that way,’ Lydia says, and she’s walking quickly now, but not too quickly, not quickly enough to draw the attention of those three boys leaning against the wall of the bodega. Her arms feel clattery in their sockets, her knees liquid with panic.

‘Okay, it’s okay.’ Marisol puts an arm around Lydia’s shoulder, and they fall in step together, Lydia’s stride matching the older woman’s accidentally. And here’s Luca, tucking beneath her other arm. And they’re already half a block away, the other direction, and now they turn a corner onto a shadier street, and Lydia doesn’t know if the direction they’re going is any safer than the one they’d been traveling before, and does Marisol know where they’re going? Is she leading them somewhere? Lydia shakes herself out from beneath the woman’s arm.

‘Thank you, I’m fine now,’ she says. ‘I’m fine, we’re fine.’ She grabs Luca by the hand. ‘I just remembered something we have to do,’ she says. ‘We’ll see you back at the apartment later.’

Marisol stops, confused. ‘Oh.’

‘We’ll be back soon,’ she says, and she drags Luca across another street, and they leave Marisol standing alone in the middle of the road.

They have to get off the street, out of sight. Away from anyone who might recognize them. Los Jardineros are here, in Nogales. Perhaps as an alliance. Perhaps as a test market, a turf war. Perhaps only to hunt her, to find her, to take her back to Javier so he can finish the job of eradicating Sebastián’s entire family in return for Marta’s death. Lydia can see it as if she’s there, in that dorm room in Barcelona: a creaking sound from above. Marta’s feet swinging slightly in their navy-blue tights, one chunky black shoe still clinging to her left foot, the right one fallen to the floor beneath. Lydia squeezes her mind closed against the image, and against the certainty that Javier would follow her here, will follow her indefinitely, across anyone’s territory, until he finds her. Only in el norte will his power be diminished. In el norte, where there’s no impunity for violent men. At least not for violent men like him, she thinks.

There are no sidewalks here; the garden gates and shopfronts sit directly at the edges of the streets. Cars have to swerve around the pedestrians. There’s no place to hide. They turn at the next corner and head back the way they came. Lydia’s not wearing her hat. Why didn’t she wear her hat? She hates that floppy, pink thing. She’d liked the idea of liberating herself from it long enough to buy groceries and pretend normalcy for an hour. Until the graffiti it had felt like a jaunt. Things had gone well yesterday at the bank. The apartment was comfortable. They were so close! She had let her guard down. Estúpida.

An old woman leans against her door jamb and calls out to them as they pass, ‘¿Fruta, pan, leche, huevos?’

It’s not the supermarket Lydia’d been in search of, but maybe it’s better: a woman selling the basics out of a makeshift shop in the dark front room of her house. They duck inside and Lydia keeps an eye on the street through the open door. They buy eggs, tortillas, onions, an avocado, and some fruit.

‘Do you have a hat?’ Lydia asks her.

‘A hat?’ The woman shakes her head.

‘Or a scarf? Anything for my hair?’

‘No. Lo siento.’

‘It’s okay. Thanks anyway.’

‘Wait.’ The woman snaps her fingers and totters into the kitchen. She returns with a thin blue dish towel adorned by a pattern of flowers and hummingbirds. She presents it to Lydia like a bottle of fine wine, and gestures that she could use it to cover her hair.

‘How much?’ Lydia asks.

‘Cien pesos.’

Lydia nods, and ties the cloth over her hair like a handkerchief.

‘What about for him?’ The old woman points at Luca with her chin, and Lydia turns to look at him, confused. ‘Are you crossing?’ she asks, this time using her chin to point north, toward la frontera.

Lydia hesitates for only a moment and then confesses. ‘Yes, we’re crossing.’

‘He needs a coat,’ the lady says. ‘It gets very cold.’

‘He has a sweatshirt and a warm jacket.’

‘Wait.’ The woman disappears into the kitchen again, and Lydia and Luca can hear her banging through cupboards or closets, shifting things around, dragging a box across the floor. Luca giggles in the leftover quiet, but Lydia’s too nervous to join him. She eyes both doorways, interior and exterior. When the lady returns, she’s carrying two lumps of knitted blue yarn, which she spreads out across the counter so Lydia can assess their shapes: a hat and scarf. Perhaps a little too big for Luca, but the yarn is thick and warm. Lydia touches the soft wool with her fingertips, and nods.

‘How much?’

The old woman waves at Luca. ‘Un regalito,’ she says. ‘Para la suerte.’

They move through the streets as quickly and carefully as they can. Each window and door they pass feels like a possible booby trap. She counts their steps to try and keep herself calm. Luca carries the eggs and tortillas. She carries the bag with the produce. She considers Marisol as they go, her apparent kindness and sorrow. Behind Lydia’s fear, she might find room to feel bad about the abrupt way she left Marisol standing in the street. The fact that she hadn’t followed them, hadn’t insisted or attempted to redirect them, that feels to Lydia like probable evidence that she’s no nefarious actor. She probably is who she claims to be: a deported mother, desperate to return to her daughters in California. When Lydia sees the house where their apartment is, she holds her breath. She looks behind her. Only one car on the street. It approaches slowly, and Lydia doesn’t exhale until it rolls past them, the elderly couple inside giving Luca a friendly wave as they go.

‘Thank you, God,’ she says out loud when they step through the door and close it behind them. She leans against it for a moment and allows herself to breathe before, together, she and Luca descend the steps back into the apartment. There are voices and laughter below, and it’s warmer inside than on the street – humid with people. Lydia walks in, and when she gets to the bottom step, she drops her grocery bag to the floor.

‘Surprise!’

Lorenzo is seated on the black leather couch.

Lydia cannot immediately respond. An avocado rolls out from the toppled bag. Her terror causes a speech delay. She pushes through it. ‘What are you doing here?’ She picks up the wobbling avocado.

‘Same as you, going to el norte.’

The avocado resting in her hand is like a still life. ‘But how did you find us?’

‘Puta, don’t flatter yourself,’ he says. ‘I didn’t find you. I found El Chacal. It just happened to be a nice surprise when I walked in and saw the hottie twins were here.’

Marisol is in the kitchen with a glass of water, and the two men with the low hats are seated at the counter with a deck of cards. Lydia stands behind the couch across from Lorenzo, who’s sprawled back on the facing sofa.

‘Anyway, this guy is the best coyote in Nogales,’ Lorenzo says. ‘What’d you think, nobody else would know that?’

‘You’re not…’ She doesn’t know how to finish the question, so she doesn’t. It hangs, half-formed.

He has black shorts on now, and his skin has been darkened a shade or two by the sun, but everything else about him is the same: the diamond stud earrings, the flat-brimmed baseball cap, slightly sun-faded, but still clean. His socks are remarkably white for a migrant, but his expensive shoes are beginning to look worn. He sits up and swings his feet to the floor in front of him. ‘Look, I know I make you uncomfortable, and I don’t really give a shit. It’s not my problem,’ he says. ‘But I swear I didn’t follow you, I wasn’t looking for you. Just like I told you, I’m done with all that Jardinero shit. I’m out.’

Lydia studies him for a moment. Because there’s nothing she can do about any of it, about the graffiti announcing Javier’s presence, about the sickening proximity of Lorenzo, about feeling acutely distrustful of everyone she meets: Marisol, who emerges from the kitchen to retrieve and unpack the groceries, the men sitting at the counter playing cards, Lorenzo smirking on the couch. Any one of them could mean her harm. Any one of them could murder Luca in his sleep. They haven’t done it yet. So perhaps they won’t. Lydia rubs her thighs through her jeans. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, his being here. The graffiti.

‘Okay,’ she says.

‘Así que tranquila.’

She regards him for another moment. ‘But if it’s true,’ she says. ‘If you’re really out?’ She lets a beat pass so she can focus, measure her words. ‘Then there’s something you should know.’

‘Yeah? What’s that?’

‘Los Jardineros are here.’

A calculated disclosure. Sharing this information may benefit her in a number of ways.

‘In Nogales?’ he asks.

She nods. Perhaps he’ll feel indebted to her. In any case, there is this: the opportunity to observe his reaction. And he does react. He blanches. Gone is the smile, the arrogant posture. He sits up and clears his throat. His shoulders hunch automatically, so Lydia can see it’s authentic. Lorenzo is afraid.

‘How do you know?’ he asks.

‘I saw their graffiti.’ She sits down on the arm of the opposite couch. She’s aware of the two men at the counter, listening. Their cards remain in their hands.

‘Close by?’

‘A few blocks from here.’ She turns to Luca. ‘Why don’t you go check on the girls. See what Beto is up to.’ He scoots down the hall into the bedroom where they all slept last night. To Lorenzo she says, ‘You want an omelet?’

While the two women are cooking, Soledad escapes the apartment. What felt spacious for the five of them is cramped with nine, especially with the reappearance of that revolting naco Lorenzo.

They’re in the far west of the city, only steps from the border, and Soledad paces the street outside, up and down the hill, watching the emptiness on the other side. The border is unnatural here, a sharp and arbitrary line that slashes through the desert, restraining the surging city behind it to the south. There is almost nothing Soledad can see on the northern side of that line – perhaps there really isn’t anything over there, or perhaps whatever’s there is hidden by the buckles and folds of the landscape. On her third trip down the hill, she goes a little farther and finds a remarkable place where the landscape funnels into itself. There’s a bald patch of dirt beside the road, and a little berm built up there that looks like a ramp. Indeed, the berm is higher than the fence because of a significant dip where the border is lower than the road. Soledad stands on this ramp, and her heart soars across like a bird. She could almost run and launch herself across. She might manage to jump it from here. She scrambles the few feet down the gravelly embankment to where the rusty red fence digs into the earth, and she wraps her fingers around two of the thick red posts, and leans her forehead against the bars, and she can see very clearly then that the fence is only a psychological barrier, and that the real impediment to crossing here is the technology on the other side. There’s a dirt road over there that follows the jagged landscape wherever it leads. The road is worn smooth by the regular accommodation of the heavy tires of the United States Border Patrol. Soledad cannot see them, but she can sense them there, just out of sight. She sees the evidence of their proximity in the whirring electronics mounted on tall poles that dot the hillsides. She doesn’t know what those contraptions are – cameras or sensors or lights or speakers – but whatever they are, she can sense that they’re aware of her presence. She sticks her hand through the fence and wiggles her fingers on the other side. Her fingers are in el norte. She spits through the fence. Only to leave a piece of herself there on American dirt.